After healing from the loss of its senior pastor, one local church looks to start a new era under new leadership.

“We’re humbled that the church voted us into this position,” said the Rev. Kyle Clayton, 34, senior pastor of The Church at Quail Creek. “You want to broadcast confidence, because you want your church to feel like they can count on you, but you feel like a duck, where on top it’s all calm and underneath, those legs are just whipping at the water. I’m confident that our church has faith in me, but I get my confidence from spending time in the word.”

The church voted after Sunday morning’s service to officially make Clayton the senior pastor.

“I was one of the youth workers that got to work with him,” said Beverly Zearley, member of The Church at Quail Creek. “I’ve been able to hear Kyle preach for about four to five years now. He’s amazing, so I’m thrilled about the results. I knew he was good, now the whole church knows he good.”

Since November, Clayton had been filling in for senior pastor Stan Coffey, who had been ill.

“We kind of have the process where everybody plays their part,” Clayton said. “We try to fill in gaps for each other, so I still visited hospitals and ministered to senior adults in our church. The only difference for me was that I preached every Sunday, I took more of that role during that time.”

Eventually, church leaders would have decide the next step in the search for a pastor, but for Clayton, that position was not on his radar.

“We were just praying and healing with our church,” Clayton said. “Losing our senior pastor was a big deal for us ... we wanted to just serve and love on our church, and move forward together.”

Dr. Steve Norris, church deacon, who is also one of the deacons said after months of prayer, he and his fellow deacons felt Clayton was best person to lead the church.

“Kyle knows this church body and understands the legacy that Stan left,” Norris said. “We know Kyle, he’s been there for us, and we know his heart.”

The group of deacons did weigh the pros and cons of starting a search committee. but quickly realized that Clayton was what the church needed, Norris said.

“At the end of the day, we felt it wasn’t necessary to look at other pastors when we already had someone,” he said. “He’s been head pastor at churches before, he has a passion for the word of God, has a passion for spreading the faith, and I think Kyle brings excitement.”

Moving forward, Clayton said, he wants The Church at Quail Creek to become a church that does more community outreach and help people find Christ.

“The burden of my heart is to disciple to people — to go find lost people and disciple to them,” Clayton said. “I think people genuinely want to grow in Christ, they just don’t know what to do next, and that’s my heartbeat. Investing in other people is who I am.”

Zearley said it’s ideal that Clayton was chosen as senior pastor.

“I’m really excited about the future of the church,” she said. “Kyle has done such a good job in keeping us together, and focused on what God wanted for us. God was already using him. It was just neat the way it worked out.”